Dead Man's Tale

By G.A. Lisby

The gates of the prison slowly open. The frail bent man limps out after seventeen years. Little does he understand of the trap he is walking into. Can he stay alive? Can he keep his children safe? Does he have the skill it will take? It will take all he learned in prison and more. Strap yourself in, it will be a bumpy ride.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Jun 5, 2012
• ISBN: 9781426907838

G.A. Lisby

No Biography for Author

Book preview

Chapter 1

Howdy

Yea, yea, so what do you what to know? What? What? Speak up, I’m deef. Well I was born in nineteen fourteen, on the plains of South Dakota, in a bitty town of Gettysburg. You could blink and miss it. My first recollection of the devastation of the First World War was the Spanish Influenza. Yep, the horse and cart would collect the bodies every morning and stack’em up like fire wood. There were no funerals either, everybody was just too sick. My mother was never right after that. She up and died when I was ten years old, died right in my arms she did. So cold that winter was. You could not bury the dead till the ground thawed out some. I guess if you lived through that you had to be pretty tough. Everyone was up and drinking turpentine to kill it, I reckon that worked the best. You were fined if you spit in the street or did not carry a handkerchief. Can you imagine if they did that today?

After my mother died, my Pappy and me never really saw eye to eye. I mainly hung out with the Injuns who lived in town. I became good at card playing. My best skill has always been the memorization of two decks of cards. Course Pappy being the town attorney put quite a monkey wrench into things. Especially the day I won the pool hall at the ripe old age of sixteen. I never did finish school but I got as far as the eighth grade. School was rather a boring place for the likes of me. I always did figure my kids got their heads for math from my side of the family. By the time I won that pool hall, I was up to two packs of cigarettes a day and pack’n heat.

What? No, I never did like hard liquor, never could trust it. Rather, I could not trust myself with it. That never did stop me from running boot leg out of Canada during prohibition. I only did deal in the best, mighty fine stuff if I say so myself. That’s what the boys wanted and I drove it down. It got to be a big operation. The boys out of Chicago always paid protection to the coppers and provided us with some thugs too. I never had any trouble during those times. I was a mighty fine driver, but I tended to get a mite edgy.

No, I never fought in the war. I was spending those years in the big house for attempted murder. The most peaceful time of my life, I might add. Three squares a day and you knew what was expected of you. The rules never changed. Sure beat my marriage. Personally, I would almost prefer the box to marriage. You call it solitary now; I spent two years in the box. I deserved it. I could not stand, or lay fully extended. It was more or less a hole in the ground with a grate of it. I even trained cockroaches to send messages to my friends. I guess nobody would really believe me unless they had to do it. I was in solitary for throwing boiling soap on a guard. I wanted to get out of the laundry and work on the chain gang. I can tell you from experience that was not a bright idea. I would not recommend it. After two years, I could never stand up straight. See my hump? I could never put on any weight either, but I am plenty good and wiry.

Take the year when they held up the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. They had everybody spread out on the floor as hostages. I was already in my sixties and had the brilliant luck to get through the door just as they had every one kissing the linoleum. They yelled at me to get down and join the others. Forget that. I just told them to shoot, I was already old and smoke cured. I ran down that aisle and threw cans after me. They fired off a few rounds and missed. I made it into the back room and slammed the door shut. I grabbed the phone and threw myself on the floor and called emergency. Thank god that door was bullet proof. They picked up every one of those punks. They thought they could scare me.

Now my Missus, that’s what throws the fear of God in me. That is why I always keep my hair buzzed. I’d tell the barber to clip it close. That way she couldn’t get a hold of it with a pair of pliers. See, if looks great for an old fart, don’t it? Quite the rage now anyway. My Missus was the reason I never invested in a hearing aid. I spent my whole married life wishing I was deef. When it finally happened, none to soon I might add, I enjoyed some blessed peaceful moments.

I can’t say I am an educated man, but seventeen years total in the big house did educate me. I learned I didn’t want to return. I did read every book I could get my hands on. I still mostly do. Why, I can go into entire libraries and not find a single thing I have not read.

Now my Missus didn’t read. She never had to. She got what she wanted by using her tongue and salvia. Just like any politician, I call them flannel mouths. You know, they create their own jobs. I saw many a politician when I parked cars down town at the Ballard’s ramp. Many a night I would drive them home drunk and disheveled, sperm all down their pants. The next day they would never remember but they always had the balls to ask who I was voting for. There is little difference between some of them and a criminal, then again, maybe no difference at all. I’m low but not that low.

My foot is a little bum. When I was real young, I helped a missy get home from school in a blizzard. She never knew how close we were to dying. It was so bad; I could only lead the horses by feeling fence posts as a guide. Then, the first thing those damn horses did when they had half a chance was run over my foot with the cart. As if things weren’t bad enough to begin with, there I was in the middle of Montana with a crushed foot and a half frozen kid. I walked the blizzard feeling those fence posts with a crushed foot. Never trust a horse.

Nah, now my foot doesn’t hurt. When I turned fifty I had the bones removed. They couldn’t give me any more trouble then. That doctor did a fine job. I was out of commission about six weeks. Things got a little tight. That’s when the Catholic priest and his attorney paid us a visit one evening. They started putting the squeeze on my Missus since she wasn’t keeping up with her weekly pledge. I actually thought maybe he had come by to se how I was holding up. I ain’t Catholic but even that turned my stomach sour. I heard them threatening my wife in the kitchen in those low tones. I couldn’t walk, but I lost no time lurching out of the bedroom. I did some fine work on them with my crutches just the same. I’m low but I would never take money from a poor family. My kids and us had been living on rice for weeks. We’d have cinnamon rice for breakfast, then tomato rice soup for lunch, with rice and Span for dinner. It never varied much.

My kids never complained. My kids, for the most part, are my joy. They always were. I just sit back and watch them still. They never cease to amaze me.

Come on outside. I need a cigarette and I’ll tell you the tall tale of how I hooked up with that female some people call my wife.

Chapter 2

Wedding Bell Blues

Now as far as I am concerned every one has the right to be miserable, that’s my motto. Marriage, it ought to give you a clue when you hear the word commitment (as in nut house), or the bonds of matrimony (as in ball and chain), but that is just my opinion and it doesn’t count for much anyway.

Yep, I sure did, I met my match all right. I did more hard time in marriage than in the big house. I must admit that at least in the big house the rules do not change. I cannot say that about day-to-day life in my marriage. No sir. Besides, a piece of paper is no guarantee of anything. It will not make you faithful or loyal or nice. It will never change a snake from being anything other than a snake for that matter. I do not recommend it for the faint of heart. From my standpoint, it was comparable to kissing hell full on the lips.

It all started innocent enough for me. I hit the Twin Cities to get some distance. I found a job as a security guard of all things. Can you believe that? Slowly I made a few friends at night playing pool at a hall on the east side. I kept low to the ground and to pick up a few extra bucks, I started playing cards quietly. I ran into this big bunch of Pollack brothers and one by one, I made a fair income. I would just pick one a week to drain a bit of cash off, no great shakes. Now these were good Catholic boys from a big farm family, you know the type. Kids to be used for free farm help. They all worked like dogs, I’m sure of that. They all left the farm as soon as possible; some had been shot up in the war as paratroopers. I bet they preferred it to farm life. Between them, they could fix, make and rebuild just about anything. I think mainly because they spent quite a bit